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BASED UK Newsletter: August 2019
Bahá’í Agency for Social & Economic Development – UK

 

News from the trustees

The BASED UK AGM  was held successfully at 27 Rutland Gate on Saturday 8th June followed by a Board meeting where the Chair, Executive Officer and Treasurer posts were confirmed for the new year. An inspiring section of the AGM was the consultation given to the following passage excerpted from a BIC document dated 1st February 2017.:

‘…In this regard, the Bahá’í International Community suggests that it will be vital for the United Nations system to develop its ability to see capacity and strength in populations that, at times, may have been given labels such as “marginalized.” Put more simply, lasting progress toward the eradication of poverty will require moving from a deficit mentality to a mentality of abundance….

Movement in this direction has already begun, at least at the level of discourse. Discussions in the development arena increasingly affirm that communities with limited financial resources are not silent and devoid of activity until international actors arrive. At the same time, interaction with such populations is frequently framed in terms of needs, challenges, shortcomings, and shortages. The agency of low-income communities is acknowledged at the level of concept. But functionally, they are often approached primarily as recipients of services and assistance – consulted to a degree about their views and preferences, but rarely embraced as capable and equal partners in a collaborative enterprise…’

BASED UK trustees have been offered workshop sessions at the Southern summer school on 24th & 26th August. Hope to see some of our supporters there, and please also check out our Facebook updates.

 

Policy highlights

A recent development policy conference in Brussels, called European Development Days (EDD), brought together more than 8,000 participants, among them societal leaders and NGOs, to tackle the issue of global inequalities. 

“It is not acceptable to see the masses of humanity as passive recipients of aid,” explained Rachel Bayani, representative of the Baha’i International Community (BIC) and moderator of one of the EDD panel discussions called “What’s religion got to do with it?”, held on 18 June. “Whatever the nature of the support from outside, development activity should emerge from within a community and belong to the people and institutions that are implementing it.”

Co-organized by various NGOs including Islamic Relief Worldwide,  EU-CORD Network and the BIC, the panel session was attended by more than 70 people and explored how religious groups and faith-based organizations constitute a major component of local capacity in many settings.The discussion allowed a genuine exploration of religion’s potential for constructive transformation in the context of development. (Extracted from Bahá'í World News Service).


 

Project & finance updates

Recent Skype calls with MDC Mongolia and Bayan Honduras has acquainted us better with their circumstances. In particular Honduras has been experiencing social unrest which has impacted on the operation of the Community Banking programme. The Board of the Bayan Association will be meeting in August and will update us with any operational decisions made in September.
Regarding eSwatini, sadly our DFID proposal for SSF funding was turned down again. We await feedback from the assessors which will be discussed with the SSF Board. BASED UK  trustees decided to research the Institute of Fundraisers UK to investigate the costs associated with professional fundraising advice; this will be taken forward in 2020. An estimate by our Treasurer based on the Finance Report presented at the AGM suggested that overall BASED UK administration costs are 6% of income, which compares favourably with other charities in the sector. 


And finally another reflection from a BASED UK fundraising volunteer sharing their wider thoughts about the work we undertake: “Working as a volunteer for BASED-UK is at once both frustrating and encouraging. Frustrating, because the task is to persuade grant making trusts etc. to support Bahá’í inspired projects in other countries. Such organisations are flooded with applications and have their own pre-existing ideas about how “developed” countries should carry out economic development in “developing” countries, often focussing purely on material development or short-term activities, it is quite a challenge to convince them that ours is a better approach. Encouraging, because, while it can be easy to wonder if the Bahá’í Faith really can make a difference when living in a small and thinly scattered UK community, working with Bahá’í inspired projects in other countries shows me what is possible. In other parts of the world, Bahá’í inspired development organisations are steadily expanding and having a major impact on their wider communities. Over the last few centuries many in the industrialised western democracies have assumed that it is their role to tell the materially poorer parts of the world how to live; seeing the progress being made by the organisations we work with increasingly convinces me that the roles are, or very soon will be, the other way around”.

 


 

 


 






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BASEDUK · c/o NSA of the Baha'is UK · 27 Rutland Gate · London, London SW71PD · United Kingdom

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